Does anyone know what they're teaching at school nowadays?  When I went to school, there were nine planets.  Remember that?  But apparently, Pluto's too small to actually be a planet.  That's sad, isn't it.  And yet I feel they should be teaching about a different planet - a planet where our imagination is the only limit and it's all fuelled by our ideas.  Or at least, that's the idea.

I am, of course, talking about LittleBigPlanet.  It's all, like, made of cloth'n'cardboard and is clearly Sony's flagship game , despite its disappointing sales figures and chart positions .

But after some considerable time getting to know the game, is it actually worth all the hype.

Well, hit the read more button and let me tell you...

    
LittleBigPlanet.  Where do you begin with a game like LittleBigPlanet (LBP)?  Who knows, really; there really never has been a game quite like it and while that phrase may be a well-used, hackneyed cliché, I really do think it deserves to be described as such, but then, so does Mister Mosquito, however I'm pleased to say that it's for a whole host of far more positive, marvellous reasons¹ . 

When I first loaded the game, I was just sort-of waiting after the regular developer and publisher splash screens because there was an FMV bit of the game with my sackboy just standing there, under a shaft of light while Mr Stephen Fry was talking in that compelling and jovial way that he does.  So.  I waited.  And I waited a bit more.  When is this game going to begin, I thought.  Perhaps there was a fault.  Maybe, after its worldwide delay and the other delay...  and its server issues across the pond , oh and let's not forget its scarcity in shops , there was some hideous bug that everyone had missed that means it doesn't even get off the ground.  But no.  Turns out that this wasn't a stuck FMV cutscene; this was actual gameplay, it was waiting for me but it looked so fucking good that I presumed it was a cutscene.

Well, this is a turn-up for the books, isn't it.  So, I took control of my sackboy and ran him through the scenery where it rather introduced me to the Media Molecule development team, some gorgeous faces, some less so, but who can deny the genius that unites them, particularly on coming up with the idea of having the credits right at the beginning and actually having you interact with them.  It's been done before, I'm sure, but not for a long time and I just felt it was rather novel, like the new and imaginative ways they have for working the credits into films.  None of this scrolling bollocks.  Well, it sort-of is, but it's side-scrolling with bits'n'bobs popping up all over the place.

I guess I should address that most taxing of questions: what actually is LittleBigPlanet?
It's a really tough question because there's no real way to define it, as was discussed on the odd podcast .  But fundamentally, I guess you could call it a platformer.  A side-scrolling platformer in a 2.5D² style with incredibly complex and realistic physics-based puzzles.  It has a lengthy single-player campaign which takes you across the actual LittleBigPlanet itself, each one with increasingly difficult and interesting puzzles, challenges, big bosses and the like.  Actually, I say single-player, but a lot of the levels actually have areas where you're meant to play with friends - up to four friends, in fact - in order to get nice bonuses and other bit'n'pieces.

But the thing about it really is that that's only the half of it (hurrah, another cliché!).  The rest of the game is, in essence, a level-editing program where you get to use exactly the same tools as the developers did to create the pre-packaged levels.  The community feel to the game is immense.  As I said, there are some areas that you can't complete without some friends - or friends-to-be - helping along the way.  When you make your own level - no easy task, I can tell you - you publish it and, provided it doesn't worry Sony in terms of copyright , every other PS3 and LBP owner in the world can play it, rate it, use little tags to describe it, add it to their favourites and compete with other players to exceed their score.  It's a big, big community game and there's really no way of it getting old, provided its users continue to pour their imagination into it and find new and exciting ways of using its resources.


The variety is key to LBP's richness and addictiveness.  For as long as you play the pre-packaged levels, you're looking at the enemies, the contraptions and the characters and trying to figure out how to construct such things yourself and the thing is, while you might have to have an understanding of physics and enjoy a bit of trial and error, you don't have to be a genius.  You don't need a degree and if you don't know how to make something work in the way you want it to, you can always experiment in the level creation facility.  It has a nifty VHS-style rewind, pause and play functionality which means you can easily undo and redo stuff.  Stephen Fry features in the tutorials and wittily talks through how to use the various tools.  And, if you're not much of one for making your own stuff, throughout the pre-packaged levels, you can collect their own contraptions trapped in little prize bubbles and use them in your own levels!  It's so very easy.  Or, it's so very complicated!  It really depends on what you want it to be.

So.
Let's look at a custom made level, shall we?  I think we should.  This is made by our very own writer and designer, Hooty McBoob and it's very nautical indeed.  Hooty, it's fair to say, has crabs.



Here you can see a little crab that Hooty's made and he's giving my Edwardian zombie sackboy some good, good advice. 

On the right, you can see a plank with score bubbles on it.  These, obviously, give you points.  You lose these when you die, but hey, shit happens.


Okay, let's move on, shall we.








Now, the bit at the bottom is a gorgeous little glass feature that moves back and forth as the waves of the sea - a very nice touch.  The crab on the right bobs up and down, while the platform to the left is a typical one of those that are attached to both of those beams.  They swing, as does the entire boat and offers a challenging segment of this level, where you have to scale these masts to get to the flag at the top.  You get bonus points for collecting more score bubbles in the quickest time, so trying to build up a rhythm is as pivotal here as those little round things that the platforms, well, pivot on.









Following the gabbing of the flag, you have to hang onto some spongy clouds that rotate and have hazardous lightning attached.  As you can see, there are big score bubbles on the surface of the clouds, so depending on how brave you are, you can try to collect them all. 


Part of the genius of LBP is the simplicity of controls.  All you can do is move, jump and grab onto things.  The rest of the controls are purely social, in terms of pulling expressions, waving your arms around or dancing.  Move, jump and grab.  List ends.  Amazing!







This is a bird that Hooty has made.  It operates on ropes and elastic, by the looks of it.  You grab on and there's an invisible switch on the grabbable head that activates the motion device - same as his dolphin later on.  The bird then swings you neatly to a save point.  Now, save points aren't actually as safe as perhaps you'd like them to be.  If you die, which happens quite often - there are four main hazards: fire (you get two chances to avoid it and then you burn, mua-ha-ha-ha!), electricity, poison gas and crushing, all of which are instant killers - you are sent back to the save point you passed most recently.  The save point gives you three or six lives and, should you expend all of these, you have to return to the very beginning of the level.  Ouch!







There's the save point to the left there.  These nasty red crabs (whith wrestler masks on, peculiarly) are dangerous because they have little electricity bits on them.  One touch and you'll be fried.




Yowzer!










And after that gauntlet (and the dolphin), you get to leg it down a ramp, collecting score bubbles as you go and reach the big score pad thing, which tots up your points and gives you a ranking within the others who've played the level, and any prizes you may have acquired as well.

Hooty's level is well-made and well-thought out and obviously, one has to test the levels we make so that you ensure that the ways of doing things are the ways you want them to be, you sort-of see the issues that games developers face when players will almost certainly branch off from your expectations and find bugs with your levels, so in that way, it's a real voyage of discovery.

Online, however, was a bit fucked when I played it.  I haven't played online for a while because my experiences of playing with other people, even those as geographically close as Hooty (he lives about a mile or so away) gave me an unappealingly laggy, hideously juddery anger-fest of an experience and while I may go back to see how it's going and if Sony has sorted their servers, I don't think it'll be any time soon, but I do have lots of two-or-more-player areas to explore as well, but whether I can be bothered is another matter.

While I'm on negative things, the controls can be a little awkward.  The 2.5D effect can result in some awkward jumps onto platforms or objects that you were just trying to get away from.  In general though, the controls are as you'd expect, if a little spongy in places, but it really doesn't hinder the gameplay much.  The game looks absolutely gorgeous as well, there are reflections on the glassy objects that, in HD, make you marvel at the detail.  It really is an amazing game that sucks you in and makes you want to spend an eternity on creating your own masterpieces of levels.  I mean, I haven't really achieved my LittleBigPlanet magnum opus, but that doesn't mean one isn't in the pipeline! 

We've said on our podcast that this game should never get old and while I've been playing various other games because, well, that's what i do, I really do think I will continue to go back to LBP whenever I have nothing to do and some spare time to spend on it.  Is it a reason to get a PS3?  Absolutely!

8-D

• Amazingly innovative, clever and fulfilling gameplay
• Simplicity at its most effective
• Luscious graphics, fantastic soundtrack and playful voice-overs
• Virtually infinite customisation possibilities.

>:-(

• Slightly annoying controls at times.
• Inconsistent performance online play.

So all in all the mighty LittleBigPlanet gets...

96%

Amazing.


¹ I always loved Mister Mosquito, actually, but it really was dire.  A guilty pleasure, right there. ^{back to where I was, thanks.
2} If you don't know what 2.5D is, then no fear; let me explain:  Remember those games featuring Sonic and Mario in the early 90s?  Well, they were 2D.  Side-scrolling fun-fests where all you could do was go up, down, left and right.  With the advent of 3D games, you could move your character up, down, left, right, back and forward, which gave you all three dimensions to play with.  2.5D gives you limited depth; LBP, for example has three layers of depth, as if three 2D scenes have been stacked on top of one another, giving you the ability to switch between each at will.  So, it's not quite 3D, but it's deeper than 2D.  Make sense?  Good. ^{take me back to where I was, please}